My Days Have Been a Dream
by Accidental-Ducky
Summary: Megan still has nightmares sometimes; running out of air in that trunk, being torn apart by zombies. She'll wake up afterwards drenched with sweat that mingles with her tears and she has to check on her family to make sure it wasn't real, that they're still here. Sometimes she thinks it'd be better if she wasn't. *TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDAL THOUGHTS*


Now that everything is up to code, the Gracey Mansion is a quiet place that feels more like home than it has in the three years previous. The termites have been exterminated, the spiders chased away, even the graveyard has been cleaned up. Megan should feel just fine as she walks through the halls, but it's just….

It's _quiet_.

The spirits have been gone for three years and the house is too quiet without them. Sure, her brother is downstairs doing homework and her parents are in their shared office on the ground floor, but it's not the same. She's definitely not complaining about the lack of phantom marching bands, but she'd like some company every once in a while.

Okay, so she misses Ezra and Emma like crazy and wants the duo back. Fucking sue her. Those two kept her and Michael safe, they risked their necks by lying straight to Ramsley's face. They were awesome and Emma made the best snickerdoodles that Megan's ever had. So yeah, she misses them.

The attic is just as dusty as it's always been as she walks inside; old furniture still to be restored, paintings carefully hidden from sunlight, the smell of old clothes that are starting to mildew in the damp Louisiana heat. There are pinpricks of sunlight between the boards over the windows (a precaution for the upcoming rainy season), but the main source of light is the flickering bulbs overhead. It's weak, but she already knows where she's going.

Hanging up on the wall farthest from the door is a painting, neatly matching the one above the fireplace in the study. The background was a deep red that's offset by the main subjects, a couple with gentle smiles and hope bright in their eyes. He's in a suit and waistcoat while she's in a dress made of voluminous golden silks, her hand resting over his heart, his resting just over her hip.

_(Her brother's hand tight around her own, his head a heavy weight against her arm.)_

It's the painting that should have been hanging downstairs, would have been if a butler hadn't meddled. Edward and Elizabeth got their happy ending, but it took so long to get there and Megan's mom had almost died along the way. Her whole family was almost lost because one old man thought he could play God.

Megan still has nightmares sometimes; running out of air in that trunk, being torn apart by zombies. She'll wake up afterwards drenched with sweat that mingles with her tears and she has to check on her family to make sure it wasn't real, that they're still here.

Sometimes she'll stare in her mirror for hours after those nightmares just to make that _she_ is still here.

Sometimes she thinks it'd be better if she wasn't.

You can't have nightmares if you're dead, can you? You can't sleep, you just float from year to year without ever aging. The world keeps turning and you just…. Don't. That's what Emma told her once. Emma told her a lot of things that night, but she'd looked so weary when she whispered those words and Megan hasn't been able to forget it.

_("You're just stuck," Emma sighs, staring down at her hands and the blue vapor that trails from her fingers. "Stuck on these grounds, in this house, just stuck.")_

Megan feels like that after the nightmares, stuck. She gets over it eventually, pastes on a smile so her parents don't worry and even aggravates Michael to make herself feel more normal. Tormenting her brother is her job, he'd think she didn't love him anymore if the tormenting stops.

She's normal, she's just a little _(stuck)_ tired.

There's a settee across from the painting that she's dragged over, and she thinks a nap will do her good. She'll wake up feeling more like herself, she'll have dinner with her parents and might even watch a movie with Michael. She'll wake up feeling better. She always does.

So she lays down and closes her eyes, time slipping by silently until the crickets are chirping outside and a hand is shaking her shoulder. She doesn't want to wake up at first, scared of what she'll find.

"Megan." It's Michael, his voice is high with fear and rough with something else. Almost breathless. "Megan, please wake up." Her eyes flutter open and she wonders where she is for a long moment, but then it all comes back to her. That conversation with Emma, the mournful look in her eyes just before the trunk lid comes down.

"I'm awake," she rasps. The attic had been the dream, wandering through the repaired house with that stuck feeling. It had been a dream, but she's awake now and she wishes she was dead. If she dies, then Michael will have more oxygen and he might get to live if the trunk is ever opened. Michael will have a chance and that's all that matters.

"You were mumbling again," he says, weak. They're smushed together, his hand gripping hers tightly enough that it hurts. "I couldn't make out what you were saying, though. Something about a dream."

"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."

"Grandma used to say that a lot towards the end. Remember?" She remembers the horror in her grandma's eyes as she whispered those words over and over, the way one arthritic hand had tried to grab her dad's shirt in an effort to draw him closer.

_("You can't take that job," Grandma hisses. "It'll feel like a dream, but you won't come home again.")_

"I remember." Michael's head is warm against her arm, damp with sweat as his breaths grow shallow. "We're gonna be okay, you know. Dad's gonna come get us."

"I know." She wonders what he's thinking, her imaginative baby brother with his fear of spiders and blossoming love for baseball. In her dream, the one where they're all okay and her lungs aren't burning, he's on the JV team with hopes of getting a college scholarship in the future. In her dream, they all have futures. She's fifteen in her dream, but she's still in this stupid house.

"I love you, Michael." She can hear the tears choking her voice, the weak quality that makes it waver at the end. Michael, bless him, doesn't comment on it. His voice sounds the same when he speaks and his hand tightens its hold on hers.

"I love you, too."

She closes her eyes and wakes back in the attic, forehead sticky with perspiration and a bit of the dust that clings to the settee. She's breathing deeply, the air sweet on her tongue as she sucks it in. She can breathe easily since she's not stuck in that stupid trunk anymore. She's _safe_.

Megan stands on shaky legs and makes her way back downstairs, tormenting her brother and checking in on her parents. The sky is turning a hazy pink, a watercolor painting spreading out just for her. The sight helps to calm her racing heart, let's her know that she's still alive.

"I'm not stuck," she murmurs to no one in particular. "I'm fifteen and I'm real." She moves through the multitude of rooms until she comes upon her own, crossing over to the connected bathroom. The mirror hangs over the sink, the original piece with tarnished edges.

_(Take this kiss upon the brow and, in parting from you now, thus much let me avow. You are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream.)_

The girl in the mirror is Megan, the way she's been for the last three years. Her hair's in neat braids in a ponytail, her jacket has a bit of dust along the front and a silvery cobweb on the shoulder. She hasn't changed much, not enough to show the passing of time. But she's not stuck, she refuses to be stuck here.

Megan turns away from her reflection and walks out of her bedroom, ignoring the cell phone that's been tossed haphazardly onto the bed and is now three years out of date. The world keeps turning and Megan's determined to keep turning with it. She won't get left behind.

She's safe here, she's alive, and she has her family.

Megan lets out a breath that makes her chest ache and her eyes don't open again, she and her brother still neatly locked away like old clothes. Beyond the trunk, suits of armor stand guard and their mother succumbs to poison while their father is run through by a determined butler.

"Yet if hope has flown away in a night, or in a day," she recites, not noticing the blue vapor that clings to her," in a vision, or in none, is it therefore the less gone?"

_(All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.)_


End file.
